Joan Barfoot, Special to Postmedia Network

Stories

Kids of 12, wandering aimlessly
together in pre-adolescent
restlessness, are open to all sorts of
happy or unhappy adventure, and
England’s C.J. Tudor has created five
representatives of the species to go
exploring through her first crime
novel.

The clock, it seems, is ticking down
for Flavia de Luce. After this ninth
entry in Alan Bradley’s startlingly
successful series featuring the
precocious young chemistry whiz,
there’s only one more such detective
novel to come, according to its
publisher.

It’s been a decade since Maureen
Jennings last published a novel
starring Victorian-era police
detective William Murdoch, although
his presence has continued to be felt
in a popular and long-running TV
series set in Toronto.

Trust Toronto’s Linwood Barclay to
whisk both current trends and actual
events into his best-selling crime
fiction — this time blending a famous
U.S. court case with the genuine
plague of internet trolling to come up
with another fast-moving and
surprising work.